Kal Raustiala

Good morning, everyone. Welcome. I'm Kal Raustiala. I direct the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations. And it's my great pleasure on behalf of our partners, which include the Luskin School here at UCLA, UCLA Latin American Institute, the Wilson Center's Latin American Program in DC, the Carter Center and the Community of Democracies. It's my pleasure to welcome you to our conference on "Safeguarding Democracy in the Americas: How to Strengthen the Inter-American Democratic Charter," 20 years after its adoption. I think as you all know, we organize this conference around the Summit of the Americas, which was kicked off this week. And we'll be continuing for the next couple of days. It's a great pleasure to have so many fantastic people from around the region, also from this campus, but really from all over coming to talk about this and as you know, President Boric of Chile will give our keynote later this morning. So with that, I'm going to turn things over to Ambassador Mark Green, the CEO and President of the Wilson Center for some preliminary remarks, and then we're going to dive right in.

Mark Green

Thank you, and these will be just preliminary overview remarks so we can get to the meat of your of your program. As a reminder, a bit of context, it was 40 years ago today, it was this very day, that Ronald Reagan gave his famous Westminster speech. He was the first President ever to speak before the British Parliament. But it was that speech that launched the US approach to democracy assistance all around the world. And 40 years ago today, Ronald Reagan told us all democracy is not a fragile flower. Still, it needs cultivating. As you said, if the rest of this century is to witness the gradual growth to freedom and democratic ideals, we must take actions to assist the campaign for democracy. And that's what got that process going. It was 20 years ago, roughly, that the Inter-American Democratic Charter was adopted. And that charter says in its very first article, the peoples of the Americas have a right to democracy, and their governments have an obligation to promote and defend. So where are we today? Well, that's what this session is really all about. So I want to offer my sincere thanks to our hosts here today, UCLA including the Burkle Center for International Relations, the Luskin School of Public Affairs, and the Latin American Institute. I also want to thank our partners, the Carter Center and the Community of Democracies, including Secretary General and my longtime friend, Tom Garrett. And of course, I want to thank the many civil society leaders who are here today, and those that they represent. Cultivating and reinforcing democracy is one of the most important challenges our hemisphere faces. In the early 1990s, nearly all of the countries in the Western Hemisphere were democratic, with Argentina, Brazil and Chile having successfully transitioned from long periods of military rule. And while there has been continued progress in some parts of the Americas, there have also been challenges and setbacks. In fact, the most recent annual report from our friends at Freedom House suggests that few regions in the world have a greater spread between free and not free countries than ours than the Americas. The dark spots are clear. The authoritarian regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua and Venezuela continue to deny their people fair elections, as well as basic human rights. Havana continues to harass and beat up in jail those who stray from the official party line. In Nicaragua, Ortega has dissolved and canceled hundreds of NGOs. And unjustly he is holding well over 170 political prisoners in Port-au-Prince. The President has been assassinated, and lawlessness has taken hold in too many neighborhoods. And in Venezuela, a country blessed in resources, the economy has been reduced to stockouts and scarcities in the most basic of food and medicine, due to Maduro's mismanagement, corruption, and repression. In troubled parts of the Americas, thousands In Venezuela, millions are voting with their feet. So where do we see hope? Where are the reasons for optimism? First and foremost in the people of the Americas themselves, and the CSOs, the civil society organizations that give them voice, the church and the State students and church leaders who, despite all the threats and brutality, stand up for democracy in Nicaragua. The Ladies in White who still march quietly for their family members imprisoned in Cuba, the countless democracy activists in Venezuela who chose not Maduro, but Guaido, and refused to back down no matter how much pain the Maduro tries to inflict. Since President Reagan spoke at Westminster 40 years ago today, the challenge to democracy's growth has evolved. 40 years ago, there was still an ideological debate whether democracy was actually the right answer for most of the world. The debate is over. And the Inter-American Democratic Charter is very clear proof.

But a new battlefront has emerged in its place. And it is the one that we must talk about now. It involves a new crop of politicians who brazenly claim democracies mantle, only to rob the term of any real meaning. They say they want elections, in fact, they welcome the elections. And then they bend the rules, prohibit true debate, and rig the results. So the game is over before it has even begun. In many ways, this new front in the campaign for democracy is more dangerous for us. It is certainly more complex. The opponents of democracy know full well that civil society is the irreplaceable connective tissue between everyday citizens and democratic institutions. It's what helps government become truly citizen centered, and citizen responsive. It's what strengthens the accountability any real democracy must have. And so it's also what autocrats target for intimidation and repression. So 40 years on from Westminster, 20 years on from that Democratic Charter, democracy is to return to its hopeful path. Once again, it is crucial to protect and to reaffirm the role of civil society throughout the Americas. The challenge is serious. And the work will always be hard. But it's what we owe democracy's frontline heroes - those students in Nicaragua, the artists in Havana, and so many others. And that's what today's session is about, and what we should all take home when we leave here today. Thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to this discussion. There is important work to be done. And so now to get things going, I would like to turn this conversation over to Dr. Benjamin Gedan, who is Acting Director of the Wilson Center's Latin American Program. Benjamin over to you for the discussion.

Benjamin Gedan

Many thanks, everyone for being here today, both in person and online. Thank you to all of our partners at UCLA. Thank you to the Carter Center to the Community of Democracies. And thank you very much to our expert panelists who we'll be hearing from shortly. As Ambassador Greene described well, there's no greater, more pressing topic for the Americas. And there are plenty of competing urgent matters. The Summit of the Americas is addressing a variety of themes from the digitalization of the region, economic recovery, strengthening public health systems, addressing the impacts of climate change in the region, food insecurity, violence, you name it. It's hard to imagine durable solutions to any of those challenges without better governance, and it's hard to imagine a path to better governance without stronger democratic institutions. And as we've just heard, and we will discuss in greater detail, democratic institutions in the region have been suffering for many years now. And we've seen an accelerating deterioration in the quality of democracy in many parts of this region, a region that had until recently been seen as a model for democratic transitions. We're going to start our conversation with an overview of the state of democracy globally and in particular in Latin America from my colleague from UCLA, Dr. Helmut Anheier, after which we will go into greater detail with our speakers, including the Secretary General of the Community of Democracies Tom Garrick, the Secretary General of International IDEA, Kevin Casas-Zamora, a leader from Justicia Transicional México, Marieclaire Acosta, and briefly we'll be joined by Laura Chinchilla, the former president of Costa Rica, who is joining us as I speak. After we have a conversation amongst ourselves, I will very quickly invite all of you to participate. Both students and faculty and other experts have gathered here at UCLA to discuss again what I believe to be the most pressing matter in the Western Hemisphere. With that, I welcome you to the podium.

Helmut Anheier

Yes, good morning. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I think I wanted to add what the ambassador has just referred to, that we have various landmarks this year. But we refer to so many years of that charter and so many years of that charter, it is also one charter that we very often forget, but has perhaps been the most important Charters of all, and that is the Atlantic Charter, which was signed by FDR and Churchill, on the Atlantic, in 1941. And that laid the architecture for the post World War Two world. And all too often, we forget the Atlantic Charter, and it's worth reading it, because it makes very important claims as to the importance of democracy, as well. What I will present to you in the next 15 minutes is very much a context to our discussion. It has to do with an index we developed here at the Luskin School with the support of Berggruen Institute at UCLA. Yeah, it asked a very important question, we think. How is it that governments and countries differ so much in the quality of life they provide, keeping everything else equal. We understand governments as the ability of a country to manage public problems and to deliver public goods such as health care, a safe environment, and Social Security. And I want to show that governments, governance really matters. And here is the life expectancy of two countries, Denmark and the United States. And you see how they diverge. Right. And it has to do with different decisions that governments have made about how much they invest in public health. And public health, of course, is a topic good. And it is a dramatic difference. And it's almost three to four years of life expectancy that emerged as a difference just in the last two decades. So we want to understand, how accountable are governments? And how is their capacity, or what is their capacity to act on the mandate they have to deliver public goods and ultimately, the quality of life. We introduced a triangle, you might say we call it a governance triangle, that examines the relationship between democratic accountability of a government, the capacity a government has to deliver, and the actual result it achieved in terms of public goods. We went through quite a significant way of identifying what would then be the correct indicators. And I'm not going to bore you with that. But just to tell you that there are many, many, many indicators. And we have nine major indicators for each of these dimensions. So we look at institutional accountability, electoral accountability, societal accountability, and ask how democratic is a country? Do we go beyond? Does it have elections? What are the appropriate checks and balances? Is there a vibrant civil society on the clock? When it comes to state capacity? One has to do with fiscal aspects tax revenue, right? And is government able to coordinate among different partners, because very often, government doesn't do things alone. It usually needs either the public or the private, or the nonprofit sector to deliver. And then we look at three types of public goods, social public goods, economic public goods, and environmental public goods. And this is what we found first looking at the URL. What you can't see on that is on the left. This is Africa, right? And Africa starts at a low level. By the way, can we somehow get to full screen? Because it does not show it on up here?

Yeah, so this is a bit of a disadvantage that you have, at the moment. This is how democratic accountability developed between the year 2000 and the year 2020. And you see that in Africa, we see a way upward. So Africa is actually more democraticcally accountable than it was. This line here, this is like these are the Americas. So that's North, Central, and South America together. So there is a slight improvement, but not not much. But, and then you have other parts of the world that I won't go into now, the most democratic part of the world is Europe at the moment. But even in Europe, you do see kind of a flattening of the curve. And this is then the state capacity. And here it gets very, very critical because the average state capacity increase somewhat in Africa. And it decreased in Latin America. And it improved somewhat in Asia. And it's about the same in in Europe. What is critical in our index is the relationship between the accountability of - this is the accountability one, see it, it drops in the Americas quite significantly, right. And it's that region of the world, that shows the most clear drop in the last 20 years when it comes to accountability. And what we focus on in the index is the relationship between democratic accountability, state capacity and public goods delivery for quality of life. And I will say more about that in a moment. Here, you see an animation of how countries move about in this, in the 20 year cycle. And you will see that it's not a lot of movement in the upper right hand corner of it. There is a lot of movement down here, right. And these are the countries that have become more democratic, but then they fall back again. And we say they fall back again, because they were unable to translate the mandate of more democratic accountability into state capacity. And then the electorate is unhappy, or something else happened. And the countries fall back into a more autocratic mode, the less democratic mode. So what's critical is that if a country has an increase in democratic accountability, critically critically, you have to increase state capacity. And you have to deliver, and many countries failed doing that. Here you see, the United States and China, of course, the two superpowers that we have. And see, China is doing very badly when it comes to democratic accountability. But it manages to improve its state capacity, right? Because it has all these resources, and it can extract significantly from the population, whereas the United States has still quite a lot of accountability. But it dropped also significantly in the last 10 years. And it is not moving in the same direction as China. Now, here are for Latin American countries. We see in Latin America, we have very, very different dynamics going on. In Venezuela, it was already mentioned why virtually no accountability, and it is moving very much to the left losing state capacity significantly. Right. So if Venezuela ,and that's the story that we want to tell, if Venezuela were to become more democratic, what are donors and countries wanting to assist? Venezuela should keep in mind, it is absolutely urgent, then to make sure that there will be state capacity to deliver in the short term, not in 10 years, but you do have to do make it that within the next election cycle, there will be visible improvements. And you see that other countries are oscillating. They're not moving up and down. They're going almost in circles. And here, we have to think about what is it that holds these these countries back? Is it a lack of accountability? Perhaps in countries like like Brazil, you could say that. But it is most likely that state capacity is insufficient for an indicator such as public goods delivery, which is more into the future. So we developed this index just in the last year. We presented it here at UCLA a week ago, today. And we covered 140 countries over a 20 year period. The report is available online. You're most welcome to look at it. There's also summary, but we were surprised that Africa has improved so much. It's a continent with that we always associate with of miserably and things are not moving going well. But it is a continent that also gives us hope. And we should think that if you have a region, like Latin America, that is going through a bit of a malaise, when it comes to democratic accountability, other countries, other regions of the world started with much worse positions, such as Africa. And they manage to pull up and to pull out of this. Now, keeping in mind that it is a very important lesson that we want to share with you. And in summary, I've restated again, critical is the relationship between democratic accountability once gained, once achieved with an improvement in state capacity into short and medium term to capture the momentum. And we have too many countries that do not manage to do this, and they fall back into the more autocratic mode of governance. So and that's where you can download a report. And thank you for your attention. I look forward to this.

Many thanks, absolutely essential context for our conversation, both geographic and thematic. And we very much take on board the notion that it is difficult to separate the quality and sustainability and endurance of democracy from the performance of democratic governments and their ability to meet the needs of their populations. It's a subject we will address here, but perhaps not in the in the detail that requires. Although we will absolutely take that on board, that we cannot separate public support for democracy and its ability to endure from the abilities of these governments to meet the demands of their populations. Let me let me dive right into our conversation about the state of democracy in the Americas. And if in fact, we are witnessing democratic backsliding as it appears we are, why is that occurring? Why are the tools that we have developed to prevent that trend not serving the purpose as designed? What structures from this region and other regions might be useful to reconsider? What types of better implementation of those tools might be politically feasible? I'll enter my final introductory remarks by saying that our goal is solutions here, not simply to identify these challenges, but to come up with as many new ideas as we can that are politically feasible to address these challenges. I want to start with you, Kevin Casas-Zamora, from international Idea, if I might. And my question is, the context of the Summit of the Americas is very unfortunately, there was a debate throughout the region over which countries should be participating. And the lessons one might draw from that was one, there are countries that are widely considered authoritarian right now, in Latin America, something that's very regrettable - and other than Cuba wasn't true just a few years ago. But also the fact that so many governments in the region were championing these countries and their participation in the summit was read by some observers as a sign of a frank commitment to democracy in the region that no longer should be the ticket to ride in hemispheric institutions. I'm curious if you read any lessons from those debates into this question about the commitment of the region to democracy as an ideal?

Kevin Casas-Zamora

Thank you so much Ben, for inviting me here. First of all, I would like to extend that gratitude to all the organizers, This panel is wonderful to be here and complain about Southern California, particularly you come from Stockholm, right? Where the weather is different. So, look, the question of who comes to the summit, who's invited to the summit, is of course a topical question of the day. And let me prolong my answer by saying that, there's no question that what is happening in Cuba, in Venezuela, and Nicaragua is abhorrent. It's terrible, which should be denounced in all possible ways. However, on the question of whether those countries should be invited or not to the summit, I am someone of two minds, to tell you the truth. It really depends on how you can see the purpose of the summit. If the summit is to be a celebration of democracy and democratic values, then it makes eminent sense to exclude those guys. And let me be clear that that's the way in which the summit was conceived. Back in 94, was a different world back then. And this is important. Now, if the summit is conceived as a forum to address common challenges, collective challenges in the hemisphere, then it might not make as much sense to exclude those countries. You might need to have as broad an attendance as possible. If you want those challenges, it really depends on how you can see the summit. Now, it's possible to make the argument that one of the collective problems that we are facing is the weakening of democracy in the region. So if that collective purpose is better served by extending the message of invitation by (democracy), I mean, really depends on how you think of the purpose of something. Now, I'm less troubled by the, people that defend the notion and the countries and defend the notion that Venezuela, and Cuba should be invited, then, you know, as a transgression, to the values and the purpose of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. I think is much more troubling, what we've seen over the past couple of years with regards to Nicaragua, that's much more serious. I mean, the fact that there has not been a way to evoke the Inter American Democratic Charter in the face of grotesque violations of human rights to Nicaragua, I think it's much more serious. You know, and there are many reasons why that has happened. And I hope that in the course of this discussion, we're going to go into into some of this, but I mean, we know that the the enforceability of the Inter-American Democratic Charter has been hamstrung by problems of the size of the instrument, as with many other democratic clauses that underpin the workings of other international organizations formally committed to democracy. I mean, you look at what has happened within the EU with regards to Hungary. and to a lesser degree Poland. They're tied up in knots because they don't have the means to enforce those clauses, which were conceived for threats in a different world. I mean, backsliding was not an issue back then, when the Inter-American Democratic Charter was was drafted in, but the enforceability of the charter is also being hamstrung by problems of political width. I mean, the fact that it hasn't been possible to get the two thirds of the vote of the OAS to do this tells you something. Now, why, I mean, where are these problems, political. will come from? Well, there, there are many reasons. I mean, it strikes me as plausible that three reasons - there might be others - are, number one, and it pains me to say it, but it's, I guess, at this point, self evident the loss of US leadership, globally, when it comes to the whole democracy related issues. You know, it's seldom said that one of the reasons for the irresistible expansion, global expansion of markets over the past seven years, is related to the fact that the preeminent geopolitical power in the world has been a liberal democracy. To the extent that that influence wins, the whole democratic cause will suffer inevitably. So this is one, and this is playing out in our hemisphere - this loss of leadership. Number two, I think the issue of the exclusion of Cuba continues to poison US- Latin America relations in a number of different ways. And countries are in the region are less willing to play along with any mechanism that excludes Cuba, because that's a raw nerve in the region. And number three, I think there's a broader issue here, which is that it many authoritarian leaders and would-be authoritarian leaders in the region, as well as globally, sends that there's a change in the international atmosphere to defend the monarchs. The price that you pay for democratic transgressions is far less now than it was a generation ago, diplomatically and all of us. So I think it's all those factors combined that result in the lack of political will to enforce the classes that are meant to defend democracy in our regional and hemispheric instruments. So, you know, that would be my take on the question of who comes and who was excluded from the summit.

Excellent, and many thanks. Now I'm going to turn to you. Kevin has raised a variety of issues here that have contributed to the deterioration of democracy in the region - many of them, you know, not in the regions control, and certainly not solvable in the short term. These include democratic recession globally, but also questions of political will, that arguably will be difficult to solve. I want to actually focus on the instruments themselves, because we might be able to productively think about a reform agenda, and in particular, the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Kevin makes the case that it doesn't apply effectively to the new challenges to democratic backsliding, that occurs in a slower manner, versus maybe a traditional military coup d'etat where everyone can identify it when they see it and react in ways that the charter envision. Is that a diagnosis you share? And if so, are there politically feasible ways that this can be implemented to address the modern threats to democracy? Or if necessary, amended to do so?

Laura Chinchilla

Yes, I share the thoughts that came in, that Kevin presented as the starting point of the discussion. And by the way, thank you for inviting me here discussing probably the most pressing challenge that we have in our region. But before we talk to me in the in the direction of your question, I will, I would like to add three more comments beside itself. I think that also the situation is being aggravated by the inconsistencies that we find in the United States are pawns of our democracy. For example, we had disarmament of democracy just a couple of months ago, six months in December. And in that situation, the notion of democracy excluded some other countries that are no longer coming to the summit, and probably it is because they were excluded. And it was very hard to understand. But they were excluded. Of course, in all of those cases, we have concerns about what has happened in terms of the rule of law. But it was not easy to understand why Bolivia, Guatemala and El Salvador, for example, works. So that is something that is not clear. When do you apply the standards of democracy and when you don't apply them? Inconsistency is also found where for example, in the way the United States is dealing with it as well. And the messages we are proceeding with last days is that, you know, how will we be able to coexist with. So there is another concerning example. And also, you no longer have consensus within the United States about democracy. That is something that changed dramatically, as compared with the US. So you have the Republican Party promoting some reforms, which then will take democracy very sensibly and thenI think there is another another issue that is affecting the environment and this question of the subject. Now, I'm going to your questions. I will say that we have challenges both at the regional level and the wisdom levels in terms of which kind of instruments we can use to respond to the challenges of democracy or democratic governance. But let me first refer to the domestic challenges. Beyond the challenge of delivering was very well centered but I mean, the power governance are not able to respond to citizen needs. It's going to be very hard to ask them to live in the moment. And I am afraid that this situation will get even worse because we are suffering the dramatic impact of the COVID 19 pandemic. There are many overlapping crisis. The governments do not have the instruments to respond to the citizens' demand. So what will happen is that those events will continue. Christian people will become more impassioned, and the governments will not be able to respond. So although we are in the middle of an electoral cycle, and that basically means that people, you know, they have a kind of renewables, but what is going to happen? I don't think it's going to change. So, but beyond is kind of the challenge of delivering. I think we have a challenge over presentation and also a challenge of reforming democratic governance in the right way. Concerning the challenge of representation, just let me give you some of the data, probably you're good at it. Both political parties and Parliaments, the most emblematic institutions of representative democracies, are the least trusted institutions in the region. 30%, on average, in Latin America for education, political parties, and 10% of this for Congress. And that means that there is a lack of the trusted collective. They also have mechanisms to obligate interest and breach broad agreements. So that is a challenge for democratic governance. And the other thing is how to reform bankruptcy with when we look what is happening in terms of responses to these challenges. We've now we found kind of responses. One is more hyper presidentialism. So, okay, if democracy is not able to, so let's concentrate even more power in the president. And so, at the end, the medicine will be worse than the disease, okay. Because we remember what is happening once that they access to power, those, you know, unscrupulous presidents, these autocrats they send outwardly, they, they only do negative things in that direction. And the other response, which is very well intentioned, but at the end, it is not resolving the situation but also is aggravating the situation of democratic governance is confrontation.

You know, in the name of more participation, we are seeing election and political reforms in the region, which basically, are fragmenting the political scenario. So it is that there is the case, for example, there was the case of Colombia. They found some ways to obligate those different political parties through conventions, it is this new mechanism. Also Costa Rica, for example. So, I think that we have the challenges of the performance. I understand you will later discuss these issues. And finally, we have the challenge of the original instruments, of course, but, as Kevin said, those mechanisms were designed to respond to other kinds of destruction of democracy. So, the good the bad, no, they are not, don't know decide to respond to this slow process of democratic deterioration. It is undoubtedly true that we will not wake up in the region every day with more with more autocrats who would more you know dictatorships that we wake up every day with less quality. And the Organization of American States has not been able to withstand it.

Many thanks. Thomas, I want to turn to you for a global question related to instruments that exist in other regions that have similarly committed themselves to democracy. You can echo loss of return to the European Union. What we've heard now, both from Laura and from Kevin is the system designed to protect democracy in the Americas was not designed to protect against the current threat, which has been described as a much slower deterioration in the quality of democratic institutions. I have to imagine that that same threat is visible elsewhere, though, very unfortunately, we do have traditional military coup d'etat as well, undermining democracy in West Africa, in Myanmar and elsewhere. Could you talk a bit about whether other regions have developed more appropriate, more effective tools to fight this more modern threat?

Thomas Garrett

Thank you very much. And as I join my panelists, my colleagues here, I also want to thank the organizers for bringing us all together on this important issue. Let me just mention for those of you who may not be as familiar with the Community of Democracies that it was founded in the year 2000. And it was 107 nations that gathered and looked at democracy. And of course, as Kevin's mentioned, another submission. It was a very different time. Madeleine Albright was one of the founders of the Community of Democracies, and she had said to me, it was like rolling boulders down the hill. She said, we felt like children in a candy shop in some ways, because in the year 2000, we were thinking, democracy was the trajectory. If one country was not a democracy, it was on a trajectory eventually to find its way. But the important thing that came with that meeting was the Warsaw Declaration, which are 19 principles of human rights, democracy and rule of law. And the Warsaw Declaration focused very much on the individual inalienable rights of the individual. And so 22 years later, as we've reviewed that with younger generations, as we've looked at that in light of challenges to democracy, which is the admission, we used to be primarily external. And today, many of the challenges, especially in our hemisphere, are internal. But we find that these principles still have relevance. And so it was a year or so after the war situation that we saw the Inter-American Democratic Charter. And I think for both of those, what I would probably really recommend is this idea that we look at those afresh, 20 years later, two decades or more than they are we look at them afresh, not as catalogs, democratic standards, not as a regional gathering the issue, the declaration. We look at those - it would be the wrong word to say to weaponize those, that wouldn't be the right word speaking with democracy - we look at those afresh, with civil society, as to how do we make those actionable? How do we make those accountable today? And so we are trying to do that, in a process in the Community of Democracies in which we look at, we asked member states to renew their membership and do a reevaluation over time, of their adherence to these civil society, human rights rule of law standards. And we do that not only among our member states, we do that also with the active involvement of civil society. Kevin and I did yesterday with a group of civil society organizations from across the region, and they were solutions oriented. I think it was a very good group. And I was very happy to be a part of that.

Looking at the world, you know, governments are only going to move so far. We have found that and say, look at who's invited to a summit. There are other issues involved than in who simply a good democratic partner. There are important issues involved with Venezuela that didn't exist just a year or so ago, as we looked at global issues. And so what I found is that we've got to really enhance the role of civil society, because they're the ones who are holding government's feet to the fire. Governments see only those ultimate thick objectives. Civil society sees the person. And so those are some of the ideas that we'd have to use in solutions. But it is really going to be again, people in the streets, movements of people that are going to make these things happen rather than governments themselves, because governments are always going to move along in a somewhat compromised fashion.

Many thanks. Speaking of the importance of civil society, I want to bring Marieclaire Acosta into this conversation, and not only because of the role that you and your organization play, but also because of the case of Mexico itself. As arguably an example of the kinds of processes that we're seeing that are very difficult to address given the timescale of the of the democratic decline, I do want to exaggerate the conditions in Mexico. And so I'll let you describe the concerns that you've expressed and what you work on every day, and what lessons that might offer for how Latin America itself, these multilateral institutions, the United States, can be more effective as guardians of democratic institutions.

Marieclaire Acosta

Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me in this very challenging and interesting panel. I think that one of the problems of Mexico, one of the many, many problems of Mexico, is that there's been a lot of attention put on democratic elections and getting the means to achieve political office. And very, very little has been done in terms of data. And that is the problem that eventually has led to this regression that we are experiencing in Mexico, which is serious, right. Perhaps it doesn't look as serious as other parts of the region, but it is. And we've just had elections this last weekend. At this point, with every comment that I have read about the election, so far, what the comments say is that these elections were won by a movement, but basically, by an individual. And that individual is President Manuel López Obrador. The political parties are losing whatever they have. They are very, very weak and modernize this very strange mix of members of the PRD and you know, other leaders. But basically, it is a movement run by the President who devotes three hours a day, to talking at length to the people of Mexico. And, and so what we're seeing is a sort of a dissolution of institutions. I think the one that is in greatest danger is of course, the National Board for Elections winning, which is going to be attacked. There is already an electoral reform in the making and to rip it of its autonomy and independence. And of course, it's such. And it's a very paradoxical situation, because if there's one institution that has the crux of the citizens of Mexico, it is precisely the electoral board. But it is an issue and its performance in these last election is extraordinary. To say nothing about the elections, the midterm elections last year, where we had 20,000 positions and offices that were up for election, so it did a wonderful job. But it is it is very much on the line for a serious and who knows what will happen. But it is one of López Obrador's next goals is to dismantle the unit and make it more manageable, centralized power, political power. And, of course, have an influence on who is. I mean, I don't see Lopez Obrador, staying in power, you know, forever in the way that Chavez did or other leaders, but certainly is going to try and affect who will succeed. And for that, to refashion the electoral system. Having said that, I think that the big, big issue of Mexico and always has been an issue - and this is why people are so I would say dissatisfied with political parties -and it's because of extreme corruption, total lack of accountability. I mean, we have we have a justice system that is incapable of investigating more than 95% of the crimes that exist. And this has been going on for decades. That's a huge issue. And that issue, of course, has to do directly with the very, very serious condition of public security. Public security in Mexico is a disaster. We've had more of them and it grows. The disaster grows and grows and grows, and we have more victims of homicide than we have had in previous governments. And this is serious. We have appalling figures of disappearances. I mean the latest count was a 100,000 disappeared. And most of them come from the year 2006. We can go on and on and on. And then there is another issue, which is still civic space. Civic spaces closing, closing, closing. We are the most dangerous country for journalists in the world. The most dangerous country for journalists that are not in a conflict situation. We've just had 11 assassinated journalists this year alone. Again, an impunity rate of 99%. Human rights defenders, 97 human rights defenders have been murdered since the year 2018. Adding to a list of most of these, by the way are environmentalists. Again, total impunity. And every day, the President of Mexico rails against press, the independent press. They actually have a section in this daily program to point out the lies of the press. And so again, attacks on civil society organizations. So when we talk about the role of civil society, it doesn't - we had a given that social system, civil societies are going to perform and act when there are very few conditions for civil society to mobilize and are closing down, closing down. So what I would say is that we have a serious problem of accountability an a serious problem of state delivery of goods. The COVID pandemic was a case in point and a growing inequality and poverty. And then there are more poor people in Mexico now, according to the latest estimates, than there were before Lopez Obrador came to power. So what is that? At the same time he is the most popular president. He has about a 60% of popularity. So what is happening? And I think, well, there are a lot of handouts, of cash handouts. These are very important. Social programs are absolutely I think one of the reasons why this type of government can have such a high rate of popularity and be able to mobilize. And the narrative. The narrative is absolutely essential. And it is perfect. So I will end with that.

Yes, sure. I want to ask a question. But feel free to react. The question I have for you, is it so we've heard many times starting with our excellent introductory remarks about the lower quality of public goods, the necessity of marrying democracy to the performance of government. My question for you Kevin is whether that takes us in a direction where democracy advocates like you will be asked instead to be advocates for better public security, advocates for economic growth, advocates for the kinds of policies that we now think of as making democracy deliver, and not advocates for democratic institutions for democratic life?

Yeah. Well, look, I mean, this is - I'll answer your question. And then I'm gonna say something else that came up in the course of the conversation. Many interesting things have come up in the course of this conversation and to your question. I mean, I think that we've learned something over the past two years from the pandemic. It is that the quality of democratic governance literally saves lives. Right. So I would hope that we would really make a collective effort to put discussions about politics compared to governance at the heart of public debates. And that means engaging in a serious conversation about issues, for example, of institutional design. How do we revisit some of the features of our political systems that are countering the ability to make decisions and to solve problems in an effective and efficacious way? And I'll give you what, you know, for whatever reason, there are many. And some of them were mentioned by a President Chinchilla Laura. We've accepted - I mean, we've sort of gotten used to this uneasy coexistence between presidential systems and fragmented party systems. And we seem to think, for whatever reason, that it is hard for a lot to be a presidential system forever and ever. And it beats me. I mean, I don't know, why is that? I mean, I get it, you know, there are historical position and all, but it is so blatantly obvious that this is creating problems all over the place, that I would think that we would do well to revisit the discussion, number one. Number two. By way of, you know, an issue that matters for the quality of the democratic in governance, fiscal paths. It is impossible to provide exactly what Helmut was saying, to provide public goods and services in an adequate way, if you don't have the fiscal firepower to do that. And that means revisiting our tax systems, but also the way in which we spend. So the question of fiscal robustness, and that thing is required in most countries, some kind of fiscal pact. Number three, they showed the quality of public administration, public management, which used to be seen, you know, as this, you know, issue in the periphery of the Democratic debate as a kind of technical issue. It's not. I mean, the ability of states to provide only goods and services hinges upon that. On the quality of bureaucratic structures, upon the quality of public managers and so on. Number four, the issue of trust, which we've seen is an essential issue for the ability of governments to respond in times of crisis. And it is impossible to talk about the question of trust in Latin America without talking about the question of corruption, which is having a toxic effect all over the place. So getting serious about reducing, eliminating, hopefully, impunity for corruption is a must, if trust is to be built. So there you have the makings of, I mean, there might be other issues, but there you have the basic contours of a robust agenda on the qualities and public governance that I would hope would be at the center of public debates. And I'll save my other comment for later. On the question of, you know, and I'll try to be since you asked me about it, or you've given the opportunity to take on the question of how to activate - how to solve the fiendishly difficult issue of correcting the unenforceability of the current mechanisms that we have to protect democracy originally.

No, no, and we will get to it. And it's critical. Laura, I want to ask you the same question I asked Kevin, which is, should we as defenders of democracy be talking about the quality of elections the independence of judiciaries? Or should we be talking about how governments deliver it? Should the whole conversation at this point be about proper administration, proper management of bureaucratic institutions? Should it be about the notion that you cannot defend democracy unless you have governments that can satisfy the basic needs of the population? Are we discussing this in the wrong framing entirely, is my question.

Yes, of course. I think it is impossible to to think about sustaining democracy if you don't have a robust system of the rule of law. For example, it's impossible to. It is also impossible to imagine, because everybody is saying, look on the positive side. Democracy has been resilient in our generation. We should aspire, for democracies to be resilient. Otherwise, it will be possible to sustain itself in a specific region. In doing that, we have to go beyond the electoral system challenges, which I think, in general terms, we are doing quite well in that sense. Department is not there, to put it very clear. The company is not necessarily elections, how we organized in elections, how professional the electoral bodies are. The problem is it's unlimited, let me give you some information, which is very interesting. I think the people, the people are demanding, and that has to do with what Thomas mentioned about the importance of civil society. For me, it is the most important pillar right now. If you will want to do something about democracy in the future, we will not come civil society, we will need to vote. But this is what people argue. Because we have recognized that people of citizens are turning out. And democracy is in crisis, but turnout, now we are in the middle of the electoral cycle. And we can see what is happening. But also 70 to 77%, almost 80% of people consider voting a good thing. When that percentage is disaggregated, 40% to 46%, consider that one should always vote. And more than 3% consider that one should vote, always, but also protects. That means that people have this code, that there is political line between one election and the other. They manage participation. And that has to do most with the youth. So the true challenge we have in our region is in one hand, to renew and wire in more traditional channels. So democratic representation, what to do about Congress, the President's political parties. There is important reforms there and carrying talk about the challenges of the presidential system. And on the other hand, we need to design and put forward mechanisms for citizen participation. Every time that I have mentioned this issue in the last five to six years, the reaction on the political side and the current side is very uncertain. They tell me, be careful, be careful. Well, look, the populists are doing that. They are using the people. They are mobilizing people. They are convincing the people through referendums, we know legitimacy. So we must be able to channelize that demand coming from people about more participation. And one last comment. Because very recently, I participated in a report on human security. We just basically tried to revisit the concept of human security. And when he came to Latin America, we decided to go for a new concept, and that is clinical effects, then I think that there is a huge challenge here. You know that kind of negotiations in Salvador. What it means is that you already have the gangs, working as political actors. And you need to be very realistic about what we are going to do and that has to do with United States foreign policy. And the recognition that the drug policy in the hemisphere has been a collective failure. Don't do anything there. It will impossible to try to solve all the challenges to democratic governance.

Thomas now let's dig deeper into the question of public opinion with regards to democracy beyond leading civil society organizations, but the larger groups of people living in these societies. You know, we hear generally about cynicism about democracy. We see data in the Americas from Latinobarómetro and others showing a significant decline in support for democratic institutions and greater indifference - not a support for authoritarian systems but an indifference. That's actually a result of real desperation for better government performance. Yet we have some positive data here as well of reasonable levels of participation in elections and even in between elections, the idea of remaining engaged. Can you talk about the the importance of engaging broader publics in this discussion about the quality and sustainability of democracy.

They are very similar to the numbers that President Chinchilla just mentioned. The Community of Democracies, late last year, did a 55 nation survey, along with think tanks from Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Germany and the United States. And we found also great dissatisfaction with the performance of democracy. We also found numbers similar to what the President just mentioned. And that was, people still believe that protest and voting were, what they wanted and what they were looking to do. And so you did find that as you separate it out. specific groups of the populations, of course, are feeling alienated in particular. And this is why we have to really focus on young people. I've worked in the field of democracy promotion for a few decades. And I know that once upon a time, back in the good old days, as we might say, you went out and worked on getting people engaged in the system, and you knew you were going to be getting a strong democratic outcome. And that's not necessarily true today. Young people are being hit through social media, on all types of ideas for policy and governance. You have to be a little bit more discerning today. But still they are the key, I believe. A greater engagement of women, participation of women in the political system. We look at our democracy, and we still find that at this current rate they're going, it will be 50 to 100 years before you start to see gender equality in elected office unless something is done to really jumpstart that. So the idea of moving I think, into inclusion, participation, of previously marginalized groups is one of the key answers that make for democracies in trying to move forward and trying to address these issues. I did just want to say briefly about the idea of democracy that doesn't deliver, or democracies that are seen as delivering. I think we're in a special period right now in which we could look at these ideas. For instance, Kevin said about looking at institutional design, because we're facing it due to the pandemic. But also facing due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We're seeing suddenly, food being weaponized in the way it never was before. We saw through the pandemic supply chain, issues in which we realize democracies can't trust authoritarian nations to deliver essential items. And so we need to, I think, take all of these things into account but realize now is an inflection point with which we can do this. We can talk about how challenging the problems are from the last decade. But I think we're at an inflection point where we can look at something new. We'll always need a universal membership body, such as the United Nations, or even a summit that includes all nations in the region. But there's still a way for democracies to work together to approach that.

Let me briefly ask you one more question. And then we have about 15 minutes left, and then President Boris of Chile will be here to speak to us as well. And so just if you have questions as well, for our experts, please think of them now. There should be a microphone that will circulate. My question for you is about this, this challenge of the unpredictability of engaging with the broader public that we've heard. Mexico, as you've pointed out, has a case of a president you've described as weakening democratic institutions but being extremely popular. El Salvador is another classic example of this. It appears to be a challenge for defenders of democracy, when democratically elected very popular leaders are engaging in practices that seem to be setting the country in an authoritarian direction. How do you challenge that both externally and as advocates within the country?

I think one way of challenging this is going to the areas where the lack of accountability of that government is more acute and has terrible, terrible consequences. And that has to do with human rights. It has to do in the right to life and the right to liberty, but mostly in the right to life, which is a big, big issue in Mexico. And I think, for instance, the mobilisation of women's groups has been extremely important in Mexico, because of the fact that, well, something like 10 of women are being assassinated in Mexico every day. So there's violence, and this was particularly acute during the pandemic. But there's one thing, I mean, one thing is to mobilize in politics. And the other thing is to achieve results. And Mexico has always had mobilizations and protests, but never results. And so I think that that is the greatest challenge of all. I can give examples of that. I think perhaps a very relevant example having to do with the right to life is the whole issue of disappearances in Mexico. The state has done practically nothing to investigate disappearances all over this government. There's also been some good progress, but it's mostly the founders themselves, to go out in the field, to dig the remains, and try and find out what happened to their loved ones. And I mean, this is a phenomenon of 1000s and 1000s. And yeah, the results are almost negligible. So you have to go to that particular aspect of the whole issue of participation. And that has to do with what President Chinchilla said very clearly. And it's, I think, there we have to focus a great deal of effort.

So go ahead, Kevin. And then Jenny, I wanted to see if you had any insights and others I know, it's all the expertise in the room that we've got, please go ahead.

Thank you. I mean, on this question of what to do, in, you know, when faced with a catalyst of this world. As you mentioned, Ben, almost in passing something that I think is key in this story, which is the notion of indifference. I mean, part of what's happening, particularly in this case, in like El Salvador and Mexico, is that simply people are not ready to give up on democracy. You know, to Tom's points, people are happy to support democracy in theory, but are deeply unhappy with democracy in practice. And what we're seeing in Latin America is very little, according to the evidence, very little in the way of increase support for authoritarian options, the straight up autoritarian options. What's going up is the proportion of people that say that for them, it will be exactly the same to have a democratic system. That's the problem. So that tells you that the real danger to democracy, and here I go to one of the points raised by Laura. The real dangers to democracy in Latin America is not really about military takeovers, or sudden reversals of democracy. It's about the gradual degradation in the quality of democracy. And here, you know, I go to the point that I made earlier about the quality of the operating governance. We can make the claim the normal case for democracy and it will go through in the face. For 98% of the people out there the approval depends on about democracy being able to solve real problems for real people. And it so happens that when you look at the figures in Latin America, to me, the single most important figure to explain what's happening with democracy in Latin America, and to explain this enormous disaffection that we're seeing is this piece of data that comes in Latinobarometro. The 77% of the population in Latin America that are convinced that the government works to further the interest of the powerful few instead of the interests of the people as a whole, how do you build democratic legitimacy in such a situation? How do you build democratic legitimacy in a situation in which almost 80% of the people are convinced that the system works for the in power? Very difficult.

Excellent. We will just be joined in just a moment by President Gabriel Boric of Chile. So please join me in thanking our excellent panelists.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai